Carrot Cake

Again it has been a busy few days for us as my son left for the Haj together with my parents today. The last few days we have had family dinners both at my parents house to celebrate my Dad's and Fatin's birthday albeit a litttle early. We had a lovely barbeque but again in the midst of my busy schedule I did not take photos... I know I have to be more prepared next time either that or employ one of my kids to take shots!

Last night my in laws came over for dinner at my house and my mum in law made a really nice fish curry, plus we had fried crabs - it must be in season there are so many at the market these days! and I did shepherds Pie for the kids. So there was a lot of cooking involved.

I did quite a few cakes to help cater for the many well wishers who came to mum's house to bid her farewell as well as for the small doa selamat we had this morning. Amongst one of the cakes I did was carrot cake. A close family friend today asked me how do I make my carrot cakes so nice and fluffy- Anty A this recipe is for you and it really is a tried and tested recipe that never fails for me - Selamat Mencoba!

Grease and line 10 inch tin, preheat oven to 150C.

For the cake:

6 oz plain flour

1.5 teaspoon baking powder

1.5 teaspoon bicarbonate powder

8 oz caster sugar

4 oz chopped almonds or walnuts

8 oz carrots grated ( About 2-3 medium sized carrots )

4 eggs

8 oz corn oil

0.5 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

1 teaspoon vanilla essence.

For the icing:

1 packet cream cheese (225g)- at room temperature

0.5 cup icing sugar

2 tablespoon or 1 oz soft butter

( Beat all of the above until light and fluffy)

Method:

1. Sift flour with baking powder, bicarbonate soda, cinnamon powder and salt.

2. Beat sugar with oil using mixer, add eggs one at a time and vanilla essence.

3. Fold in grated carrots and chopped almonds or walnuts.

4. Fold in flour.

5. Pour into prepared cake tin and bake in oven for 40-60 minutes until cake is done.

6. Once cake is cool ice with cream cheese icing.

Food Tasting at the Empire

On Tuesday lunchtime, Maria and I joined Lisa and her mum - Aunty Ludwine, for a food tasting session at the Empire for Sarah's wedding in December. The food was mostly Ok and overall the started and the desert were the best dishes. I have upload all the photos so Sarah and Nick can see as they are in the UK at the moment.

Starter -The starter was like a prawn cocktail, the huge prawn was set on a bed of honeydew and rockmelon and there was a small or minute amount of lime dressing. Oh they put a breadstick on the top which was quite stale and soft! So we suggested that citrus fruits be included and the lime dressing needed a bit more oomph as it was quite bland. But I must say the prawn was very fresh.

Soup - the soup was Hot and sour soup but was very spicy and peppery as well as very sour. This would be ok for those who like spicy food and need to sweat! In the end the family decided to change the soup to a chicken noodle soup or soto ayam as this might be more palatable and not too spicy.

Main course - White rice, Rendang, Chicken curry, prawn masak tomato, Ikan masak tumis, mixed vegetables and mee mamak. This was all served in a huge hidang ( round foodwarmer).

Mee Mamak - I think this is Sarah's favourite dish and although I did not taste it as I am not into noodles, Maria and Lisa said it was excellent! So good choice Sarah!

The rendang - was excellent too as the beef pieces were very tender and spices just right and not too overbearing with that coconut taste.

The Chicken curry - I thought was a bit too bland and needed more curry powder and the sauce looked quite pale! We suggested that the skin of the chicken pieces be removed.

The fish dish - fish was very fresh and was quite succulent and meaty and had been fried prior to being sauteed with a spicy sauce that tasted more of turmeric. A decision was made to change this to sweet and sour fish instead.

The prawn dish - too tasted funny very sweet and tomato taste I suppose the name of the dish is tomato prawns. So I think in the end a decision was made to change the dish to buttermilk prawns instead.

Mixed Vegetables - this was the worst dish and I guess it always is at most weddings- the brocolli and cauliflower had been sitting in that hidang for probably an hour so were pretty soft when we ate them. There was also a burnt aftertaste- I cannot remeber what vegetable was chosen instead of this but I think it might have been Fiddlehead Ferns ( or Pakis!!!) masak lemak ( cooked in coconut milk). Hopefully this might turn out better on the day.

The desert was Sago Gula Melaka and this was excellent in terms of presentation as well as taste! Just enough gula melaka and coconut milk and the melon ball added that extra fresh taste to the dish. They also garnished the dish with a crunchy toffee cat's tongue ( I think it's called that!!) and that was very yummy indeed!

My involvement in this wedding is actually more to do with supplying the flowers but who can resist a free tasting meal!!I must admit I was rather full that afternoon and am not too akin to having such a heavy meal during the day.. still thanks Aunty Ludwine and Lisa for including me and Maria that day, I had a great time despite having to give marks for all the food! I am sure the food on the wedding day will turn out fantastic!

The Busy Weekend

barbie chocolate cake. Banana chocolate chip muffins

Ayden's M nM first birthday cake. Strawberry chocolate cake.

The weekend has been such a busy one – On Friday I had to do one birthday cake to be sent into school but ended up being sent to the house as the poor girl was down with Fever. Then in the afternoon I had the pleasure of wathching my son performing in the drum line at the annual JIS International Day which was a blast. Then back home to do some muffins for my Sister in Law’s open house for Saturday afternoon and with Zahra down with fever for the past 6 days on and off, I was feeling quite exhausted come Sunday but..no real time to relax as I had yet another birthday cake to prepare, this time for a friend’s daughter. She wanted a Barbie doll cake. It was quite difficult at first to get the doll to stay upright after being wrapped up in foil but my son and I sellotaped 4 satay sticks onto the doll and stuck it through a piece of cardboard this in turn helped to stabilize the doll when I finally stuck it into the cake! The last time I did a barbie cake I stuck the barbie in an oval shaped ckae then put it onto the square chocolate base. But I could not be bothered to do that this time! We just stuck foil around the doll before icing it. Decorating the doll was quite fun although as usual I panicked when it came to adding the right amount of colouring to the icing!! Amin came to the rescue and I think we got quite close to the right colour! My new resolution is to attend a cake decorating class sometime to help improve future cake designs .I must say I was quite pleased with the outcome and the real pleasure is that the cake is pure chocolate, no additives and no spongy taste like what we normally get at most local bakeries which would charge an arm and a leg for a cake this size and style! Maybe I should start charging more!! Still decorating these cakes are quite fun although sometimes there are hits and misses..like running out of space when doing the writing or mispelling a word, but I guess that's part and parcel of decorating as a novice!! Happy Birthday again Maya and Shuih Lin and I hope you feel better Shuih Lin. I've uploaded the pictures of the various cakes I've had to do recently including the no 1 cake for Ayden's birthday that was last month. Also a picture of the chocolate chip banana muffins. Muffins are so easy to do and the only tedious part was putting the spoonfuls of mixture into the paper cases. Anyway lets hope next weekend will not be so busy, but I doubt it what with Amin's impending Haj trip coming up, I guess I'll be busy packing all his things!

Yummy Profiteroles

Last night we had our normal Thursday night prayers and mum decided to have extra prayers for their upcoming Haj. So there were more people than usual. As always Soleha was doing all the cooking and she did quite an impressive spread of Nasi Briyani ayam, Dalca, Nangka masak lemak, ikan goreng and sambal telur. With Zahra still down with fever I could not really go down there to help out. So I brought along a chocolate cake and a long time favorite dish..(something which Hanna used to prepare a lot before she got married!!! along with her homemade chocolate ice cream!!) – profiteroles stuffed with vanilla ice cream covered in chocolate sauce. Unfortunately being the novice blogger I forgot to bring my camera with me to take a photo of the finished product and although I got Donncha to bring along their camera, we all forgot to take photos until most of the profiteroles were gone! Never mind…I might be doing another batch soon and will try to post the photo then. This recipe is so easy to do and only requires a bit of elbow grease when mixing in the egg which is the trickiest part as you must mix quickly or the mixture could end up looking like scrambled eggs! In which case you have no choice but to start all over again. Still the taste of hot chocolate sauce mixed with the cold ice cream in the crunchy profiteroles is quite decadent! So give the recipe a go..

Makes 15 small profiteroles
2 eggs beaten slightly
2 oz butter
2.5 oz plain flour
125ml water

1 Tub of chocolate or vanilla ice cream
1 packet thickened cream (250ml)
250 gm dark cooking chocolate

Method
Heat oven to 150°C, prepare baking tray by greasing and flouring pan.
Put butter in water and melt over slow heat and allow mixture to boil.
Switch of heat and pour in flour stirring in one direction.
Once mixture comes together and comes off the sides of the pan, pour in beaten eggs, beat vigorously until mixture is well glazed and eggs incorporated.
Spoon mixture into ping pong size balls onto tray and cook in oven for about 30 minutes. Leave to cool in oven for a further 30 minutes.
Once cool, slit profiteroles in half and spoon or pipe in vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Arrange in dish and freeze until ready to eat.
For sauce, heat cream till almost boiling, take off heat and stir in chocolate pieces. Stir until mixture thickens – when ready to eat pour over profiteroles.

First foodie thoughts! Bamia recipe

Wow I finally get down to doing a blog at last!! About bloody time I can here my sisters shouting!! So I 'm going to base this blog on my thoughts and some recipes I want to share in the hope that you guys can enjoy the food that we eat on our family table from time to time.. Oh yeah there are times when we are really scraping the barrel for ideas of what shall we have for dinner today!!! But I guess that's every mummy's daily headache. It's hard to please everybody in my family especially my youngest Zahra, she has been getting better but is still a fussy eater. I always insist that she needs to eat her carbs(rice or potatoes) and Veg )normally limited to brocolli if she had her way), I also try to reduce on the chicken as I find that this meat is really a meat of convenience these days and god knows how much hormones are pumped into these birds!! So we have an alround menu throughout the weeks consisting of beef, fish, prawns, squid, crabs, veg, yes chicken. As for carbs we eat ofcourse mainly rice, potatoes occaisionally, noodles and we try and have pasta at least once a week. When it comes to family gathering ofcourse the food of choice for my beloved Mother In Law would be ambuyat but some of the kids don't really enjoy this..but that's another blog topic I guess.

However.... today we are having Lamb shanks bamia..sometimes Supasave has these lamb shanks but most of the times they are already marinated or chopped up..so it's best to ask and reserve I guess.

Bamia is the middle eastern name for Okra or Ladies Fingers and it is used to make stew with meat and vegetables. The Ladies Fingers help to thicken the stew's gravy hence the name of the dish Bamia. There are many varieties of how to cook this dish and you can substitute the lamb shanks for other lamb parts such as shoulder or cut up lamb leg. Alternatively beef can also be used. Whatever meat you are using, like in other stew recipes it is slow cooking to allow for the meat to tenderize. The dish is normally eaten with french bread but rice is fine too. If eating with mashed potatoes then omit potatoes and you can substitute with carrots instead. Or eat with couscous.

This was a real success for all in the family as the dish is not too spicy and not too bland. We all devoured it except for Zahra who did not have anything except for the potatoes!! Thank goodness for the vegetable soup we had prepared earlier. Ok hope you guys enjoy preparing this.


Bamia:


Serves 6 people (4 if you are hungry!!)


Ingredients:


1 large onion chopped


3 cloves of garlic smashed then chopped finely


2 shallots sliced


2 inches of ginger bruised


5-6 cardamom pods


1 cinnamon stick


1 star of anise


1 teaspoon fennel powder


1 teaspoon coriander powder


1 teaspoon turmeric powder


2 tablespoons tomato puree


3 lamb shanks ( about 1kg)


15pcs okra or ladies fingers - tops cut


3 -4 potatoes cut into 4


2-3 tablespoons ghee


Salt, sugar and pepper to taste


Enough water to cover lamb.





Method:


1.Melt Ghee in a large pot


2.Add spices, onions and powsered spice and fry till fragrant


3. Add tomato puree


4. Add Lamb pieces and fry just to brown


5. Pour water until lamb is totally submerged, and allow to come to the boil.


6. Lower down heat and let simmer for at least 2 hours until lamb is soft and comes off the bone when pricked with a fork. During the simmering stage if water has reduced keep adding more liquid.


7. Add potatoes and boil for a further 15 minutes till potatoes are soft.


8. Lastly add okra and allow to simmer for another 10 minutes until okra is soft and gravy has thickened. Season to your taste.